Fathers

Some of our favourite fathers, seeing as its Father's Day ....   (for Dad) 

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, 1962 - Has there been a more fundamentally decent father than Atticus Finch?, the widower and small-town lawyer expertly played by Gregory Peck, in Robert Mulligan's classic from the perennially loved book by Harper Lee. I loved the book, and then I loved the film ... as we spend time with Scout and Jem and Boo Radley, while Atticus has his day in court, in this Deep South Gothic drama with the spellbinding images. It all works perfectly, particularly that ending as Atticus watches over the children ....

BICYCLE THIEVES, 1948 - In broken post-war Rome, a father struggles to provide for his family. He gets a job sticking posters on walls but his bicycle gets stolen. Father and son scour the city looking for it, and then the unthinkable happens - the father is reduced to stealing a bicycle and gets caught and we see it all through his son's eyes ..... Since its release in 1948 Vittorio Se Sica's masterpiece has come to define the Italian New-Realistic movement, but it is a timeless classic, acted by non-professionals and De Sica finds the humanity in all of them, as we share the father's desperation to provide for the family when the world is conspiring against him. There is that stunning moment when the family sheets are pawned, and the pawnbroker places them on top of a pile of other families' sheets, all waiting to be reclaimed .... (see De Sica label for review).

FINDING NEMO, 2003 - One of Pixar's most enduringly popular animated features which one can enjoy time and time again, as we follow Nemo's worried father (a clown fish voiced by Albert Brooks) who seems to go half way round the planet to find his lost son, the only survivor when his family are destroyed .... Andrew Stanton's film captures the father's helplessness as he wants the best for his offspring and then allowing him to discover whats best for himself, as I suppose all our fathers had to ....

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, 1944 - Before the 1904 World Fair in St Louis, the Smith family learn lessons about life and love as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York, as the paterfamilias Mr Smith (Leon Ames) think it is best for them. He had not reckoned though on Tootie and her snowmen, the boy next door, and daughters Esther (Judy Garland) and Rose (Lucille Bremer) and their romantic complications. Add in Marjorie Main's cook and Henry Davenport's grandpa, as well as Mary Astor's perfect mother who will stand by her husband, no matter what, and poor Mr Smith (who vetoes having dinner an hour early so Rose can get her call from her beau in New York without all the family listening) does not stand a chance of moving ..... A Golden Age (and Minnelli) Classic and the ultimate dream factory movie made at that crucial point in the Second World War, when dreadful things were happening in Europe ....

Some Minnelli's for Easter ....

We have been enjoying some prime 1950s Minnelli films: musicals, dramas, comedies ..... THE BANDWAGON remains our favourite musical - see separate label. We recently covered TEA AND SYMPATHY, and also reviewed TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN a while back, THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE and DESIGNING WOMAN are particular favourites, very stylish entertainments which find Minnelli in his element, as per previous posts on them - check all at Minnelli label. I may have to go back to SOME CAME RUNNING and GIGI again (we did not care forthe 1955 THE COBWEB at all though) ..... and those other dramas like HOME FROM THE HILL (1960) ..... I actually like 1954's BRIGADOON, that studio-bound Scottish highlands musical, a childhood favourite, though it has its very obvious limitations - but Minnelli makes the most of the glittering New York interlude. For today, its BELLS ARE RINGING and KISMET, and back to the DESIGNING DEBUTANTE.

The get-up in New York's get-up-and-go comes from the switchboard operators of 'Susanswerphone'. Need a wakeup call? Your appointments? Encouragement from 'Mom'? A racetrack bet? It all comes from that dutiful nerve - or naive - centre that keeps enterprises enterprising and maybe wedding bells ringing.

Judy Holliday reprises her Tony-winning Broadway role of irrepressible switchboard girl Ella in a jubilant adaptation that marked her final movie and the final teaming of movie-musical titans Arthur Freed and Vincente Minnelli. Dean Martin co-stars as a struggling playwright in for a surprise when he learns 'Mom's' identity. The sparkling Jule Styne/Betty Comden/Adolph Green score includes Holliday's heartfelt "The Party's Over" and the Martin/Holliday duet "Just In Time". You've dialled the right numer, musical fans!

So goes the nice blurb for this 1960 Minnelli musical, it starts with nice Scope views of New York (rather like THE BEST OF EVERYTHING or BUT NOT FOR ME) as we look in on that telephone service. Telephones play an important role (as in PILLOW TALK where Rock and Doris have to share a line, and of course that telephone service in SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY which relays messages to its users...).

BELLS ARE RINGING is a pleasant view but lacks the pizazz of THE PAJAMA GAME or FUNNY FACE or MY SISTER EILEEN or KISS ME KATE or ..... It is marvellous seeing Judy Holliday one more time, sadly in her final film, she is the whole show here as the telephone operator who meddles in the affairs of clients, with nice support from Dino, Jean Stapleton and Frank Gorshin doing a Brando. Minnelli seems rather subdued here but creates some nice colour schemes and decors, but the subplot about racketeers seems tedious. The score is conducted by Andre Previn. Holliday also sings up a storm when she tells us she is "going back to be me, at the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company". Judy Holliday died aged 43 in 1965, but was marvellous in her movies ever since ADAM'S RIB in 1949.

Much more brash is Vincente's 1955 KISMET, a gaudy Arabian Nights fantasia, with that score adapted from Borodin, which thankfully provides good roles for Howard Keel and Dolores Gray - while Ann Blyth scores as Keel's daughter and Vic Damone as the Caliph. The convoluted plot features begger/poet Hajj (Keel) wanting a better life for his daughter, meanwhile she and the Caliph meet and fall in love, then Dolores Gray comes as as Lalume and she and Hajj end up together ..... the nice score includes "Stranger in Paradise", "This is my beloved", "Baubles, Bangles and Beads", "Night of my Night" and "Not Since Nineveh" as the wicked Wazir wants the Caliph to marry one of his choices, while the bandit chief is looking for his long lost son who turns ou to be the Wazir, who promptly has his father killed. This is all delirious fun as the various strands come together and the Wazir gets his just deserts. Minnelli makes it all look great too. Dolores Gray shines too as she does in her other MGM mid-50s movies (Dolores Gray label). We also liked Blyth in THE STUDENT PRINCE, 1954 and of course her immortal Veda in MILDRED PIERCE! 

The supporting cast has a nice bevy of old-timers with Monty Wooley, Sebastian Cabot, Jack Elam, Jay C Flippen and Mike Mazurki, This was another Sunday afternoon matinee favourite when I was young, and would b e a delicious double bill with the 1956 JUPITER'S DARLING another MGM extravaganza, with Esther Williams in her last musical, with Keel as Hannibal, with all those elephants ....

THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, 1958, is all about Kay Kendall's Balmain wardrobe: Kay in champagne coloured Balmain chiffon and feathers, or that red suit with matching hat for her first scene, Rex looks bemused by it all and their apartment is a joy too - with those lovely green lamps and sofas, and yellow and red furnishings all very Minnelli. Angela Lansbury plays another bitch mother who wants that chinless wonder for her own deb daughter, while Americans Sandra Dee and John Saxon are the young couple. There is a lot more on this at the various Minnelli/Kendall labels. 

DESIGNING WOMAN is delicious fun too and so very 1957, another childhood favourite. Greg and Bacall are perfectly matched here and the plot is a joy. 

Julia ? On the Beach ? The Arrangement ?

This week I am looking at and revaluating some "prestige" films that were  big in their day,  but do they still stand up now ? JULIA, ON THE BEACH, THE ARRANGEMENT.

JULIA was one of those hits from 1977 which we all went to at the time, and have been rather forgotten about since - THE TURNING POINT was another one - I will return to that later, when I have re-seen it. 

Looking at JULIA now it screams "prestige cinema" but it sees to have been has been debunked - just how much of it is true? Did Lillian Hellman make it all up? - its part of her memoir "Pentimento". It does all seem rather phoney now. Every scene is designed to be impressive, starting with the older Hellmann fishing in her boat at dawn, then that perfect period beach shack she shares with writer Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, to the manner born) as they fry fish on the beach - Cape Cod presumably. It is 1934 as we see from the calendar on the wall - the time of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. Hellmann is also a writer (after her success with the play THE CHILDREN'S HOUR), but with writer's block as we see her grappling with that old typewriter. Jane Fonda is actually ideal here, in her 70s prime, like a young Katharine Hepburn. The fastidious Fred Zinnemann carefully fashions it all - I like his other great movies like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE NUN'S STORY, THE SUNDOWNERS and he always gets superior perforances from his actors, and so it is here ....

Then the plot begins - we get flashbacks to her youth with her great friend Julia, with her wealthy grandmother Cathleen Nesbitt, and then their years at Oxford - all golden spires, and Vanessa Redgrave radiant as Julia striding around in her tweeds  while declaiming the brave new future to come ... but then of course the War intervenes .... and Julia devotes her life to fighting fascism, putting her life in danger ...

The central scene has Lillian meeting Julia in a restaurant, but they have to be very careful in case they are being watched. Julia is now on crutches .... and has a mission for Lillian to smuggle money (in her hat!)  As a thriller though its rather suspense-less. Max Schell appears as Julia's friend Johann, and the young Meryl Streep has that minute appearance. There is that train journey - will Lillian get the money throiugh safely?. But then the plot goes haywire, and suddenly Julia is dead. Lillian goes to see the body in a suburban funeral parlour (with Maurice Denham) and tries to find the baby Julia supposedly had.   

It is all still watchable, but I think we have to take it with a large pinch of salt. Redgrave and Robards both won Best Supporting Oscars here and it was nominated for a slew of other including best picture and director. It was Zinnemann's last big success (he did just one more), great score by Georges Delerue, and lensed by Douglas Slocombe. Fonda of course is a far prettier Hellman. 

ON THE BEACH

I really cannot find much to say about ON THE BEACH, that big one from 1959 by Stanley Kramer from the Nevil Shute novel. Shute's novels usually featured big ideas: aviation in NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY, war in A TOWN LIKE ALICE and only the end of the world in ON THE BEACH. Kramer like Kazan, was big in the 50s and early 60s, with those self-important movies on big themes, like THE DEFIANT ONES, INHERIT THE WIND, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG (with their great star turns) and this one set in Australia. Even Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner cannot make it sing as the ponderous affair also drags down Fred Astaire and Tony Perkins as the young naval husband. It is actually set in 1964 as atomic war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; 

one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual covers growing despair, as they wait for the radiation to reach them. The only interesting sequence is the submarine returning to San Francisco to investigate a tapping noise (which turns out to be a trapped blind cord), but where is everybody as there is no sign of dead bodies?. Did everyone just vaporise? The end coda couldn't be more in your face: that slogan "There is still time, brother"! That must have wowed them in 1959 as The Cold War escalated, it was one of the main films of that great year - but it simply does not stand the test of time and is a colossal bore now. One simply wants to fast-forward through most of it. 

THE ARRANGEMENT. Elia Kazan of course had his great decade in the 1950s, but like a lot of other once important directors may have felt left behind by the late sixties. THE ARRANGEMENT is from his own novel and it is all just too much as Kazan throws everything at us. Kirk Douglas is the business executive sick of the rat race his life as become as he deliberately crashes his car in that grim traffic scene. Deborah Kerr, getting rather matronly by then, is his worried steely wife doing all she can to help him rehabilitate himself, as he keeps flashing back to his exciting mistress Gwen - Faye Dunaway at the height of her glossy '60s glamour - who keeps taunting him about what he could have been. 

She does have that memorable line: "The screwing I'm getting is not worth the screwing I am getting". But it is all too much and too overwrought as Kirk fixates on his old Greek father Richard Boone and his nude frolics at the beach with Gwen ...

Eddie is a very rich man who has everything he wants; money, family, success, but a car crash causes him to reevaluate the life he leads. Searching for the happiness he lost, he remembers his one-time lover, Gwen, even as his wife conspires to take his fortune...

Like AMERICAN BEAUTY, Kazan's story looks anew at The American Dream and finds it wanting; looking at it now it is not as bad as some reviews said at the time, there's lots of interesting ideas here, but Kazan throws it all at us without being able to streamline it.  Right: Dunaway and Kazan.

Some eye-catching posters - an occasional series

Showpeople - another batch of fab photos

I have loved WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT? since I was 19 in 1965, as per other reports here, but had not seen this group pose before ! 

Rock, Cary, Marlon, Greg Peck - what are they watching? Who is the odd one out? - Peck, no gay or bi- rumours about him!

LET'S MAKE LOVE again, with the Montands and the Millers - see previous post with Frankie Vaughan.

 Audrey and Capucine stepping out with Givenchy in 1972.

Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor - maybe the only time they ever photographed together or in the same room - at Sinatra's concert at The Sands in 1961. Below, is another shot, with Peter Lawford on stage.

One I had not seen before: Rock and Sophia in the early 60s. He filmed with Gina (twice) and Claudia, but never with Loren ...

Sophia - smoking! -  with Greg in 1962 when she presented him with his Oscar, and in 1993 when he presented her with her second one. 

And once again, that amusing shot of them with Joan Crawford and Maximilian Schell back in 62 .... as per other reports here.

And thst glamorous Royal Film Performance lineup in 1966, with Julie Christie, Leslie Caron, Warren, Catherine Deneuve, Christopher Lee and Ursula Andress .... 

And this FUNNY LADY Royal presentation ... Barbra, Caan, with a re-united James Stewart and Lee Remick ...

Actors: Mr Peck

One of the 'People We Like' here Gregory Peck is always a pleasure to watch. One could say he was the ideal post-war male: that new breed of actors who came along in the mid-40s as the second world war drew to a close. Along with William Holden, Peck was the cream of the crop, along with young Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum, and Glenn Ford. 

Peck (1916-2003) from La Jolla, California, was always serious, but there was a sense of humour there too. One of the best-looking men of his era (just how many mothers' favourite actor was Gregory Peck?). Like Cary Grant and a few others Peck also looked great teamed with those leading ladies: Audrey in ROMAN HOLIDAY (where he got the billing changed to put her name above the title), Ava in ON THE BEACH, Ava and Susan in SNOWS OF KILLIMANJARO, Jean Simmons in THE BIG COUNTRY, 

Bacall in DESIGNING WOMAN (where he has that hilarious scene where Dolores Gray tips the plate of ravioli into his lap in the restaurant), with Sophia in ARABESQUE etc, and of course DUEL IN THE SUN in '46, the original CAPE FEAR in '62, Hitch's SPELLBOUND and THE PARADINE CASE - yup, he looked great with Ingrid and Valli too, and with Deborah Kerr in BELOVED INFIDEL as Scott Fitzgerland, if only the film had been worthy of them. He also did those adventures like GUNS OF NAVARONE, HMS HORNBLOWER etc. 

 1962 proved his Best Actor year with his perfect Atticus Finch in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - they should though have had 2 best actors that year - with O'Toole for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA also winning. Sophia Loren presented him with his best actor award, and he returned the favour presenting her with her second in 1993. 

One of his best later roles was in THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK (review at Peck, war labels) in 1983 as the Irish priest at the Vatican during World War Two, rescuing Jews from the Nazis, he and Christopher Plummer have two great roles here, along with John Gielgud as Pope Pius XII. It often pops up on tv and is worth watching.  Then there is his hilarious portrayal of Joseph Mengele in the 1978 THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL with Olivier equally hilariously miscast or over the top.  
THE OMEN with Lee Remick in 1976 was a surprise hit too, even those who did not like horror films went to this one. THE STALKING MOON was a good western, as was that space opera MAROONED, and I WALK THE LINE. 
He was an actor who took chances and didn't just rely on his looks to coast through movies, vis his Captain Ahab for Huston's MOBY DICK. His signagture roles (apart from Atticus Finch) are surely his journalist in ROMAN HOLIDAY and that sea captain out west in THE BIG COUNTRY, where he had a producer credit but apparantly Greg and Wyler fell out, as the director was going to do it his way whatever his star suggested ...